August 6, 2012

How to add new 3rd party plugins to Rhythmbox

From the folks at webupd8.org...

Now that Rhythmbox is once again the default music player in Ubuntu,
AskUbuntu moderator fossfreedom has created a PPA for various Rhythmbox
plugins that many Ubuntu users might find useful. Among the plugins
included are: Equalizer, Jump-to-Playing, Tray Icon, Microblogger,
Tablature plugin, JumpToWindow and more.

Currently, there
are 12 plugins available in this PPA and they have been tested on
Rhythmbox 2.96 which is available in the official Ubuntu 12.04
repositories. Initially, some didn't work with Rhythmbox 2.97 from the main WebUpd8 PPA but after some recent updates, all the plugins worked just fine in my short test.

- Last.fm:
adds love/ban last.fm buttons and synchronizes playcount (it can only
retrieve the playcount) and loved tracks(adds 5 stars to the track if
it's marked as loved). The sync occurs only when playing a song and it
needs to be enabled from the plugin preferences.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-lastfm-extension

- Microblogger: sends a notice about the currently playing track to identi.ca or Twitter.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-microblogger

- AlbumArt Search: searches album art using Google Image search and allows the user to select one of the results (so it's not automated)

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-albumartsearch

- Jump-to-Playing: adds a context menu and a toolbar button to jump to (highlught) the currently playing song.

- Tray Icon:
control Rhythmbox via a notification icon (like in previous Rhythmbox
versions), useful for desktop environments that don't have a media
player menu / Ubuntu indicator support. If you want to use this in
Unity, you'll have to whitelist the systray.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-tray-icon

- JumpToWindow: a Rhythmbox plugin that adds a feature similar to Winamp's "Jump to file", which includes the ability to enqueue a song.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-jumptowindow

The plugin interface doesn't come with a GUI to configure the keyboard
shortcut used to trigger JumpToWindow, so to set a keyboard shortcut, go
to System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts and add the following command under "Custom Shortcuts" (and there, also set the shortcut, like CTRL + J for instance):
/usr/lib/rhythmbox/plugins/JumpToWindow/src/activate.py

In the JumpToWindow, you can use the
space bar to start playing a song, ALT + Enter to enqueue, Enter to play
and hide the window and escape to hide the window.

- Tabulature: Find and display the guitar tablature of the current playing song from tab websites.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-tabguitar

- lLyrics: an alternative lyrics plugin, useful if the default lyrics plugin doesn't work for you.

Installation:

sudo apt-get install rhythmbox-plugin-llyric

Countdown Playlist: a plugin to create playlists based on some keywords you set, for the duration you define: